Project lead: Libby Cunningham is the community manager at WCPO, an ABC-affiliated TV station owned by the E.W. Scripps Company. Libby covers stories on a hyperlocal level, manages social media and is always trying to think up new ways her newsroom can get their audience involved. You can connect with her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Hear from Cunningham about her newsroom’s goals:

WCPO’s slogan is “On Your Side,” and during this project they wanted to do a better job of communicating that sentiment to their Facebook users. In addition to day-to-day news coverage, WCPO offers investigative journalism that they want to start a conversation around. WCPO hoped that after this project their audience would think of their TV personalities and reporters are authentic, trustworthy and part of the community.

WCPO often did a great job of seamlessly communicating their core values in posts also designed to inform. When their transmitter was struck by lightning during some rough storms in Cincinnati, WCPO took their weather broadcast to Facebook Live, which their audience expressed lots of appreciation for in the comments. Host meaningful conversation was also a really successful strategy for WCPO, and they asked their audience to weigh in and submit questions on everything from high school football to the Tri-State’s heroin epidemic.

“The engage authentically strategy made me think, because we have such great content and we know it will share well on social,” Cunningham said, “but we also know you can post it in a way that asks them and gets conversation going in the comments.”

In many cases WCPO’s audience was really receptive to the deploy your fans strategy, and their users seemed more than willing to share posts like this one about the strawberry moon. This strategy was most effective when WCPO explained why their users should share.